SW London Girls' Private & Grammar - applying for year 7 in 2023

[EmotiveBubblez]

i myself have been looking for this thread and have been unsuccessful. Saw a couple people mention it over the past day or so on the 2022 one.

so here we go, albeit a bit late.

has everyone visited all the schools on their lists?

how many schools are everyone applying to?

what schools are you applying to?

how is the preparation going?

i know some exams have taken place, how did they go?

wishing all the whirls good luck with preparation and exams, hope we all find the right schools for our daughters.

Sometimes I wonder why do we need so many different tests? All these schools use different tests and yet in the end they so often make offers to the very same kids as other schools using different tests do. As a result, DCs have to sit several exams and yet for each school they only get one chance to shine. Have a bad day, and that's it you're not getting accepted to that particular school. It would be so nice if there was a single test, used by all schools, which a DC could take more than once if they didn't have their best day (e.g. the SAT for US uni apps). Clearly, the test would have to be broad and accommodate different skills (e.g. adaptive & non-adaptive sections etc). And maybe you could take the test up to three times if you wanted to. It'll never happen, but that would make life much easier on parents and, more importantly, DCs.

I think it has both good and bad aspects. A good thing is that if there is an accident that DC does not do well in one test, he or she still has other chances instead of having one single test determining his or her faith.

Please see below the reply from whatdotheyknow regarding Sutton Grammar School results for 2020 entry.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/raw_and_standardised_scores_for#incoming-1715608

For those who also sit the Sutton grammars you should know how to interpret. For others, briefly, the 3 boys' grammars in Sutton require students to sit Stage 1 test first, and of which about 30-40% pass and then proceed to stage 2. Standardised scores are then calculated based on both stage 1 and 2 results. As you can see from the spreadsheet attached to the web page which lists all those who got offers, there are lots of students whose stage 1 and 2 results vary greatly. Some do great in stage 1 but quite badly in stage 2, and vice versa, but of course, they all get in as they are on the list. Needlessly to say, there will be many who did even poorer in stage 2 and did not get in, and many who did not do well in stage 1 and cannot proceed to stage 2 (and if they did, may well get in).

As you can see, the difference in the type of tests, and type of questions asks, and the condition of the student on that day, all have a significant impact.

Although convenient, I would rather each school has its own tests.

Agree with all of this! When there are existing, tried and tested platforms out there, why be wooed by the new kid in town that's totally untested? It's so unfair on the children.

This mirror SO many conversations DH and I have had about this. Why not have everyone who wants to apply to indie schools sit CAT tests and then have one standard set of exams - separate exams (on different days) in maths/ NVR, English / VR. Scores aggregated with CATs. That would give a child about 7 different days of short exams, ideally taken during the school day at their current school, with no added stress. Then if some schools wanted to do something extra - like the SPGS second round - or just go straight to interviews, they can.

What annoys me is I see blog posts written by secondary heads about how brutal this whole process is for young children. I hear prep school heads bemoaning how hard and stressful it is, and how they wish their students didn't have to go through it. And yet nobody is trying to change it!

Totally agree, and don t want to start on the time children have to wait between the time they do those online exams and the day they know if they made it to the second round... not sure why they have to wait for some 6/7 weeks before giving out the results? this is not helping with the stress at all..

During Covid thats what basically happened- nearly everyone sat the IESB- and lots of people were very unhappy about it. If you have a bad day you're stuffed and some kids do better on written exams rather than computer tests. Also lots of state primaries are not set up to do mass testing in the way preps are. Not sure what the answer is but I'm not sure that's it?
DDs in year 11 now and the same conversations were happening when she was in Year 5.

On the issue of Atom, DD's best friend took Putney High (which apparently now uses Atom) yesterday. She finished the maths in less than half of the allocated time as, according to her, it was not adaptive at all and she just got 'really easy questions'. Parents now worried about impact on her score.
Others were referring to the text going 'off the scale' tricky, to the point that the strongest girl at maths at the school could not finish it in the allocated time.
Even if the schools are after tests that can be easily marked, surely there are other, more tried and tested ways.

We had a spread of responses to ISEB - some kids finished with a fair amount of time to spare (a ridiculous amount in a couple of cases) and reported that the tests weren’t too hard; others found them tough and were on for longer. That is the nature of adaptive testing, I guess, but it does seem tough and perhaps unfair on kids who got booted off after a very short amount of time indeed.

Re: PHS, my friend’s child reported that Maths was hard and included algebra.

This is going back a few years but I know of two girls who sat the ISEB pretest for SPGS. One reported that the comprehension was really easy. The other said it got quite difficult towards the end and was never easy. Both girls of similar ability. The one who found it hard went through to the next round. The other girl didn't.

If Atom, Pretest Plus etc. are anything to go by, there are three levels of difficulty. What I don’t know is how the algorithm works - how many Level 1 questions do you have to get right before being promoted to Levels 2 and then 3? How many must you get wrong before dropping back a level? Would be interested to know more about the mechanics of this.

@readingcat It is the lack of transparency that people do not understand and also makes people suspicious.
If they are so confident in their algorithm, why aren't the platforms more open about how it works? This is coupled with the fact that Indies do not get to see results... so for all we know results are really misaligned with usual performance but there is no way of knowing whether it is a kid having a bad day or more pervasive and a result of the algorithm design.

@QuiteAJourney yes, agreed - schools should be able to see results. Quite apart from assisting in individual cases of aberrant results, it would be useful for them to gather data on how their cohort performs year on year in ISEB.

This is so disconcerting. I would be so worried if I was her parents, and I would definitely be flagging that immediately in writing to her current Head so that it's on record that they didn't think she got adaptive questions (so the Head has leverage to query it with PHS if she doesn't get through).

My DD keeps getting homework set on Atom that's supposed to be adaptive and never is (and the questions are comically easy).

I really hope everyone is raising all these concerns with their prep and primary school heads. Only when the heads start questioning Atom's viability with the Consortium and PHS might there be any chance of any change.

The parents have raised it with the Head of 11+ at their indie. She is quite strong at Maths (got through KGS) and was expecting some tricky questions but she was adamant that it was "too easy from beginning to end".

Our experience of Atom homework is really similar to yours - sometimes farcically easy (for the whole length), sometimes really hard (again for the whole duration), sometimes with an evident adaptive element.

I'm glad they've raised it with the school.

I too would like some transparency in the Atom process per the post from@readingcat. It's ridiculously opaque at the moment. Feels deliberately so. Is it like snakes and ladders where as soon as you get one wrong you drop right back? I expect so. I doubt it's sophisticated enough to be more nuanced than that.

I’m really surprised about Atom being used! We steered well clear of it last year because I was hearing terrible things at DD’s prep about them reducing scores in the pre-sign-up tests just to get people panicking and signing up to their subscriptions. Some of the very brightest in her year (who ended up at SPGS etc) getting initially very low scores which were nothing like their CAt scores. I also question @QuiteAJourney the hefty registration fees. DD’s school (which may be one you are talking about) have a relatively low fee compared to some, and seem to run their own in house exams and also interview every kid and have them into school I think still? But for those now using Atom, what on earth is the fee going on? Whilst they may have 1000 people paying £150-200 fee just to take the exam - massive profit margin there, and no fees to pay people to mark the test. Most don’t even now offer interviews in the first round, and some are just using ISEB sat at preps or elsewhere! so the cost cannot really be justified. Especially as most now manage applications by email, so not even any postage fees!
even 500 paying £150 is £75k which surely covers the whole admission person’s salary for the year and then some!

DD just out of IPS first round. According to her, hardest exam so far, not so much because of the type of questions but because of the time allowed. She did not finished any section but seems to have gone at a rate of more than 2 answers per minute (system seemed a bit fiddly as not ticking answers but dragging them...)

Does anyone know if Ibstock considers school references / school report or other things when deciding on whether they progress to Stage 2?

Not feeling very optimistic but keep hoping (it is a favourite of us, including DD, and a strong recommendation from her indie)

I think anyone who has used Atom can immediately see that it is complete rubbish. It is clearly a company with a smooth talking, ambitious owner who managed to perfect a marketing spiel that the schools have fallen for.

Even if you just step back and think about the claim they are making.
Google or Facebook spend billions, using the best engineers in the world, to build algorithms that sort search results or photos etc and they still get it wrong.

What are the chances that some tiny company can actually define the difficulty of questions accurately, feed them into an exam appropriately adapting them to the child’s capability. then analyse and grade the results correctly?
Zero.

This is a dismal experiment that will lead to a lot of children getting unexpected results.

If you have concerns about random Atom results, I suggest you set up a new account with a 5 day trial and do a few tests yourself.
The results are shocking.

@QuiteAJourney I have heard the same about IPS from friends who sat it today. We have it on Wednesday. I don't know if they consider the references but I have a feeling not, I think this is a quick initial cull before the next stage. But, it seems everyone had the same experience and 2 answers per minute sounds good, I know DD won't be that quick.

We had PHS also and DD definitely didn't have hard maths, despite that being her strongest subject, so that doesn't bode very well, sigh.

Surbiton today though which seemed to go ok. Keeping everything crossed.

We did not do Putney but experiences seem to have varied.
The IPS experience seems to have been more uniform... but harder.

On the issue of what they look at, I found their admissions policy. It refers to
"Performance on the computer-based test, the learning workshop and the confidential reference from the candidate’s current school are analysed and candidates may be shortlisted to sit the English and Mathematics Entrance Examinations based on their performance."

May be clutching at straws, but trying to keep hope ... (we have Emanuel next, so will keep any potential bad news on hold, in any case)

PS Well done on Surbiton. We had quite a friends there and it seems that the school made the experience not stressful and most girls came out quite happy. Which, at this point, is the best we can hope for.

@QuiteAJourney yes! That sounds like they definitely take the reference into account, yay. Good find, and great news! It sounds like your DD did well though, I wonder if anyone can actually finish it?!

Good luck for Emanuel!

Do we have any idea on numbers that get through to that Ibstock second stage?

Agree with all of this. I genuinely don't understand why more prep / primary school heads aren't challenging the use of Atom for 11+ exams. They should be advocating for their students, and challenging the Consortium / PHS on it's efficacy. As you say, it's highly likely that there are going to be some very unexpected results this year, and the only people who will suffer will be the students.

What's also baffling is that all the reviews online of Atom - including on Trustpilot - are overwhelmingly positive. The bad reviews are almost exclusively about pricing and not about content / algorithms / it being completely rubbish. I suggest all of us who are less-than-happy with it should start being a bit more vocal about it on other platforms....

Not sure, tbh. Only thing that their website says is that they have around 80 places available for external.
There were lots of kids taking the exam today - 3 sittings today (plus a 4th one at least on Wednesday). I think that there were more than 20 groups per sitting (a friend of us was in the group 21!) and 8-10 kids per group. So I recognise that there may well be in excess of 700-800 kids sitting. At my daughter's prep, it seems to be almost as popular as Emanuel in terms of ratio of applicants per places.